Installation

General Properties

icat.url

The url of the machine hosting the icat service. It should normally just have the scheme, the hostname and the port. For example: https://example.com:443

plugin.zipMapper.class

The class name of the ZipMapper which defines the Zip file structure you want. The class must be deployed in the lib/applibs directory of your domain and must be packaged with all it dependencies.

plugin.main.class

The class name of the main storage plugin. The class must be deployed in the lib/applibs directory of your domain and must be packaged with all it dependencies.

plugin.main.properties

Optional property file for the main storage plugin.

cache.dir

The location (absolute or relative to the config directory of the domain) of a directory to hold mostly zip files.

preparedCount

The number of preparedId values from prepareData calls to remember.

processQueueIntervalSeconds

The frequency of checking the process queue. This is used both for cleaning old information from memory and for triggering movements between main and archive storage (if selected).

rootUserNames

A space separated list of users allowed to make the getServiceStatus call. The user name must include the mechanism if the authenticators have been configured that way.

sizeCheckIntervalSeconds

How frequently to check the cache sizes and clean up if necessary.

readOnly

If true disables write operations (put and delete).

linkLifetimeSeconds

The length of time in seconds to keep the links established by the getLink call. If this is set to zero then the getLink call will return a NotImplementedException.

reader

Space separated icat plugin name and credentials for a user permitted to read all datasets, datafiles, investigations and facilities. For example: db username root password secret.

key

Optional key value. If specified this contributes to the computation of a cryptographic hash added to the location value in the database. The ids plugins do not see the hash. The key must of course be long enough to be secure and must be kept private.

maxIdsInQuery

The number of literal id values to be generated in an ICAT query. For Oracle this must not exceed 1000.

log.list

Optional. If present it specifies a set of call types to log via JMS calls. The types are specified by a space separated list of values taken from READ, WRITE, LINK, MIGRATE, PREPARE and INFO.

jms.topicConnectionFactory

Optional. If present it overrides the default JMS connection factory.

logback.xml

This is optional. If present it must specify the path to a logback.xml file. The path may be absolute or relative to the config directory. The file ids.logback.xml.example may be renamed to ids.logback.xml to get started.

Properties for archive storage

If you are not using archive storage then all of these properties should be omitted.

plugin.archive.class

The class name of the archive storage plugin. The class must be deployed in the lib/applibs directory of your domain and must be packaged with all it dependencies.

plugin.archive.properties

Optional property file for the archive storage plugin.

writeDelaySeconds

The amount of time to wait before writing to archive storage. This exists to allow enough time for all the datafiles to be added to a dataset before it is zipped and written.

startArchivingLevel1024bytes

If the space used in main storage exceeds this then datasets will be archived (oldest first) until the space used is below stopArchivingLevel1024bytes.

stopArchivingLevel1024bytes

See startArchivingLevel1024bytes.

storageUnit

May be dataset or datafile and is not case sensitive. A value of "dataset" means that a whole dataset of files are zipped up to be stored as a single file whereas "datafile" causes datafiles to be stored individually.

tidyBlockSize

The number of datafiles or datasets to get back in one call for archive request when space on main storage is low.

Properties for file checking

When a datafile is added to the IDS its length and checksum are computed and stored in ICAT. File checking, if enabled, cycles through all the stored data making sure that they can be read and that files have the expected size and checksum.

filesCheck.parallelCount

This must always be set, and if non zero then the readability of the data will be checked. The behaviour is dependent upon whether or not archive storage has a been requested. In the case of single level storage this is done in groups of files where the group size is defined by this parameter. If archive storage has been requested then only the archive is checked. Each file in the archive holds a complete dataset and this filesCheck.parallelCount parameter then defines how many dataset files will be checked in parallel.

In the case of checking datasets in the archive storage these are unzipped on the fly to compute the checksum of each file inside the zip file as well as its length.

If the archive storage has a long latency then it is useful to have a "large" value, however a thread is started for each stored file so the value of this parameter should not be too large.

filesCheck.gapSeconds

the number of seconds to wait before launching a check of the next batch of datafiles or datasets.

filesCheck.lastIdFile

the location of a file which is used to store the id value of the last datafile or dataset to be checked. This is so that if the IDS is restarted it will continue checking where it left off. If this file is deleted the ids will restart checking from the beginning. The parameters filesCheck.parallelCount and filesCheck.gapSeconds should be set so that the data are all checked with the desired frequency but without excessive I/O. A nagios plugin might check that this file is being written periodically and that its contents change.

filesCheck.errorLog

the file with a list of errors found. The file is not kept open but instead is opened in append mode each time a problem is spotted and then closed. A nagios plugin might be set up to watch this file. Entries in the file are data stamped and new entries are simply appended without regard for the existence of an entry for the same file.